


The Space Between

by kathryne



Series: The Past Forty Years [4]
Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Frenemies, Gen, Pre-Series, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 17:33:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11741874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathryne/pseuds/kathryne
Summary: It's not that Frankie doesn't like being able to reach out and touch someone.  She's cool with being connected – tuned in, turned on, and a little less dropped out these days, except when she has a flashback or gets a bad batch of edibles.  But there's gotta be a limit.  When Grace shows up at the beach house for Memorial Day weekend basically surgically attached to a small device that beeps, zaps, and pings all the friggin' time, Frankie hits it.*All I want for these two is post-s3 smooches and snuggles; instead I'm writing pre-series angst exploring the times when they barely tolerated each other.  Why.





	The Space Between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



> I asked for tumblr prompts so I could write little character-exploration drabbles and then this happened. Llin's prompt was _discovering some form of technology together_. Thanks, lady. :P
> 
> Find me on tumblr at @sapphoshands, where I can't stop having feelings about Jane Fonda's face and also may continue taking prompts.

It's not that Frankie doesn't like being able to reach out and touch someone. She's on the phone to Bud at college all the time, and Coyote, too, if not as often. She even got used to pagers. Eventually. Okay, it wasn't until her pot pal, Alex, started using one to organise his appointments. And maybe she still gets twitchy when Sol's goes off and he interrupts everything for some crisis Robert's having at the office, but that's mostly because of the way he freaked out the time she borrowed the thing for her robot performance art slash political demonstration in front of Golding's office. He'd been so upset, even though she'd only gotten the tiniest bit of papier-mâché on the display.

So Frankie's cool with being connected – tuned in, turned on, and a little less dropped out these days, except when she has a flashback or gets a bad batch of edibles. But there's gotta be a limit. 

When Grace shows up at the beach house for Memorial Day weekend, basically surgically attached to a small device that beeps, zaps, and pings all the friggin' time, Frankie hits it.

The fifth or tenth or twentieth time the little black box goes off, it sounds like it's right under Frankie's ear. How has she not noticed how good the acoustics are in this house? She should take up yodelling. For now, she shoots up off the couch, where she's been trying to snatch a few z's after a midnight bout of inspiration sparked by several repeat listens of 'What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits,' original vinyl, thank you very much, no sterile compact discs allowed near the artwork of Frankie B! Hey, maybe that's why Grace was slamming coffee cups around so pointedly this morning. Doesn't matter: Frankie'd almost achieved that elusive state of couchspiration, floating half-asleep in a daydream about politics and art and the artist's responsibility to challenge the historical narrative – she's so close to a breakthrough, her psychic abilities tell her, or at least she was until Grace's electronic doodad pierced her thoughts like a needle in a pot balloon that let everything good leak out before she was ready.

"For the love of Yohaulticetl, Grace," Frankie begs, storming into the other room, "can you not turn that damned thing off for twenty minutes? Fifteen! If my chakras are aligned I can get a whole sleep cycle in half the time and oh, boy, do I need it today." She clasps her hands together and flutters her eyelashes, not that she expects to melt Grace's heart, if such a thing exists, which Frankie takes leave to doubt.

Grace looks up from her makeshift desk and its mound of spreadsheets and graphs. "Yohaulticetl?" she mouths, before shaking her head and visibly dismissing it. Figures Grace Hanson isn't down with the Aztecs. Well, maybe the human sacrifice part. Definitely not the chocolate.

"Look, I'm sorry, Frankie." 'But,' Frankie prompts silently, waiting. "But I have to be available right now. We're supposed to be approving a new facial cream formula on Tuesday and I still have some questions. I need answers first. I won't let something go out with my name on it if I can't back it one hundred percent." She shrugs.

That, Frankie has to admit, is a sentiment she can get behind. Imagine putting the Bergstein seal of approval on a painting she hadn't cried over while creating. And Grace does, for once, look kind of sorry, stuck here looking out through a window while Robert and Sol sit side by side in the Adirondack chairs, watching Brianna chase Coyote up the beach with a wet towel snapping at his ass. It's after noon and she doesn't even have a martini to keep her company. But just as Frankie's starting to feel an unexpected twinge of pity, the phone warbles again. She jumps, letting out a little _yeep!_ of surprise. So does Grace. Frankie does a double take; Grace scrambles to silence the noise, deliberately avoiding Frankie's gaze.

"I get it, I do," Frankie says, and she does. Say Grace is kinda more Grace's child than either of her actual kids are. "There's got to be a middle ground, right? Doesn't it have a silent option? Or something that doesn't make me feel like I'm living in _Star Wars_? Because Bud made me watch the new movie, Grace, and that is not a good mindset to spend a relaxing, creative holiday weekend in."

Boy, Grace's defences really must be down. She squeezes the phone up against her bony sternum like she's trying to hide it – not that there's any cover in her meagre cleave – and mumbles, so fast Frankie almost doesn't hear, "I thought it was."

"What?" Frankie bends forward.

"I thought it _was_ ," Grace all but shouts into Frankie's face. "On silent! I thought I'd turned off the sound!" She's blushing fiercely, hunched out of her usual perfect posture just a little.

"Ohhhhhh." Frankie straightens slowly. She can't keep the smirk off her face. "I get it. Little Miss CEO Barbie has too many accessories, huh. Doesn't know what to do with them all."

"Frankie," Grace says, flapping one hand imploringly, but Frankie's just getting started.

"And you can't ask for help, can you? Wouldn't do to let any of your employees see that you're not perfect." Frankie shakes her head. "Because what if they didn't respect you? Then you might have to try and make them _like_ you instead."

"All right!" Grace snaps back. "Yes, it's new, and I haven't quite figured it out yet. I'm a very quick learner, I just… haven't needed to make it be quiet before. But I will." She turns away from Frankie, back still curled defensively. 

Something about the line of Grace's spine, stark below the crisp fabric of her shirt, makes it hard for Frankie to cling to her outrage. Instead, she finds herself remembering the first time Bud failed a math test in high school. His growth spurt had left him thin and gangly and his bones jabbed her in the side as she hugged him and reassured him that she didn't place any stock in the artificial academic meritocracy reinforced by teaching to the test. "I love you no matter what your truth is, even if it's that you suck at math," she finished, and he finally stood a bit straighter and hugged her back. Not that she wants to hug Grace, of course.

Frankie sighs. "Oh, give it here, Ada Lovelorn."

"What?" Grace turns just her head, peeking at Frankie over her shoulder. 

Frankie holds out an open palm, waving her fingers impatiently. "Let me take a boo," she says. Anticipating Grace's reaction, she adds, "No, I'm no web-point-oh two-dot-com computer geek, but what've you got to lose?"

"A lot," Grace mutters, but Frankie stands firm, and eventually Grace turns a little more, enough to place the device in Frankie's hand. "A-and it's Lovelace. Ada Lovelace. Not Lovelorn." The correction seems to give her the strength to let go of the phone completely.

"Right, of course it is," Frankie says, looking down at the display screen, keeping her eyes from seeking out the back of Robert's head as she fiddles with buttons. She hasn't seen Robert in the house at all since breakfast. Sol's been in and out – first to coo over last night's painting, then to make sure she washed the paint off her hands before eating, check that she was properly hydrating, fluff her pillows. He's actually hovering even more than usual. In the face of Robert's indifference to Grace, Frankie can't get too upset.

It's impossible to think with Grace leaning toward her, almost too close, watching intently as Frankie pokes and prods and clicks around with the little wheel in the middle of the phone. She turns her back on Grace's unnerving stare, ignoring her huff in favour of a picture on the screen that looks way more interesting. There's more to this thing than she expected. Technology sure is marching on, and she spares a moment's nostalgia for the powder blue princess phone she remembers from her youth, the sense memory of tangling her fingers through the cord while she chatted with her best girlfriends. So much for that. 

She clicks twice on the next picture, just for fun. Something unexpected happens. "Oh, hey," she exclaims, and Grace leaps up, demanding, "Did you actually fix it?" in an aggrieved tone.

"No, but look!" Frankie turns around, displaying the screen with a grin. A tiny ball bounces across it before falling to its doom as Frankie takes her eyes off the controls. "You can play games on this thing. Maybe I should get one of my own!" The phone makes an agonized sound of electrical death and then beeps delightedly, signalling that it's ready to try again.

"Oh, give me that." Grace yanks the phone from Frankie's hand and stabs at the buttons, exiting the game to the tune of several sad bloops. "Can't you go nap in your studio? Please? I promise, it's only till I hear back from the lab, and then it'll be off, honest." She looks at Frankie with real pleading in her eyes, and it's the most emotion Frankie's seen her show since… well, since that time they ran into each other while Frankie was rallying in support of the right of mothers to breastfeed in public and tried to get Grace to join the topless protest.

Frankie rolls her eyes. "Okay, fine, whatever. But Grace… just ask Robert, why don't you? I bet he'll know. It'll take twenty seconds and then you'll be good to beep and boop whenever you want, and only when you want."

"Right," Grace says flatly. "Sure. I'll do that." She puts the phone down and sits heavily, covering the motion by rustling through her piles of printouts. 

Frankie doesn't believe her, but her studio couch is calling, and frankly, she tells herself, she doesn't much care.

Later that night, they're all out on the patio, Robert grilling their dolphin-safe wild salmon steaks and her teriyaki tofu-na while Bud and Brianna pester Sol to give in and let them have a beer. Frankie's got a buzz of her own on after a very productive nap and an even more productive smoke, so she barely twitches when Grace slips out of the house and settles down on the chair next to her.

"Look," Grace whispers. It takes Frankie a moment to focus on the phone screen as Grace thrusts it in her face. When she does, she sees the title 'Alert Profile' across the top; of the several options below, 'Silent' is highlighted with a check mark next to it. "I looked up the instructions," Grace says – quietly, but with a proud smile.

Frankie glances over at Robert, standing by the grill, holding his glass out to Sol for more Scotch. "Yeah," she says, suddenly tired all over again. "I bet you did."


End file.
